1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to printing systems and methods, and especially methods and systems for improving throughput in a print production environment. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for collecting job characteristics from a print production environment and providing optimization information based on the collected job characteristics.
2. Background
A transaction printing environment is typically a high-volume document production entity that produces documents associated with financial transactions such as checks, invoices, statements and the like from a data stream for businesses. Typically, the data printed on each document (or set of documents) varies significantly. For example, the data on a first document might pertain to a first credit card user for a credit institution, while the data on a second document might pertain to a second credit card user for the credit institution. This is in contrast to a printing environment, such as book printing, where several identical documents may be produced and finished consecutively.
A conventional transaction print workflow is depicted in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, incoming data pertaining to a job is processed 105 to determine the operations to be performed. The data is then printed 110 using, for example a continuous feed printer. A continuous feed printer may include a roll of paper including pre-printed forms. As such, paper is continuously fed into the printer resulting in high speed printing. In a typical transaction print operation, data is printed on the forms corresponding to a plurality of recipients.
One or more of folding 115, inserting 120 and sorting 125 operations can be performed based on the requirements of the transaction print job. For a folding operation 115, each printed form can be folded according to the transaction print job requirements. Ancillary documents can be inserted 120 into the print job. For example, an advertisement for a service provided by a bank might be inserted into a bank statement print job. A sorting operation 125 could be used to sort the documents into individual document groups for each recipient. Each document group can then be mailed 130 to the appropriate recipient.
Methods exist for improving the operation of the traditional print shop. One method involves re-conceptualizing a traditional print shop as a type of factory process. The print shop is considered to be synonymous with a factory plant, and each print job is considered to be synonymous with a manufactured product. In this manner, commonly known factory flow processes can be adapted to the print shop environment and used to improve the flow of print jobs through the print shop.
In accordance with another method, a print shop may be reorganized into autonomous cells as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,079,266 to Ria et al., the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety. An autonomous cell is a group of resources used to process jobs of at least one type. A resource may include a device configured to process at least a portion of one or more jobs. In a document production or print shop environment, a resource may include a printer, a copier, a binder, a hole-punch, a collator, a sealer, an inserter or any other equipment used to process print jobs. Autonomous cells group equipment together according to different job types commonly encountered within a specific print shop. In one example of operation a job may be broken down into smaller sub-jobs and processed through the autonomous cells. Another method to improve operation is to cross-train operators on multiple pieces of equipment. Operators can then be allocated more flexibly as needed throughout the shop. Opportunities also exist to improve scheduling of jobs so as to reduce the amount of inventory and to more fully utilize equipment. An additional option is to improve the layout of equipment on the print shop floor in order to decrease the amount of excess movement required within the print shop. These methods have been shown to reduce the cost of operating all classes of print shops by up to twenty percent within six months of initial implementation.
Although such methods for operational improvement exist, print shop owners are understandably slow to change their methods of operations. Resistance to change can occur because such change can be quite invasive. For example, implementing operational improvements may require retraining operators, moving heavy equipment, and learning new processes all of which equate to down time and lost productivity for the shop during transition. This lost productivity is problematic for a shop owner who must keep the shop operating smoothly throughout the transition period. As such, a print shop owner has little incentive to make operational changes without having quantitative data showing a positive benefit to bottom-line profits. It is therefore problematic that print shop owners typically have insufficient data to quantify the extent of possible gains available to them by implementing improved operational methods.
Accordingly, systems and methods for providing print shop owners with sufficient data to quantify the extent of possible available gains would be desirable.